New
clue in the battle against Australian Hendra virusFriday, January 13, 2012

A
new study on African bats provides a vital clue for unraveling
the mysteries in Australia’s battle with the deadly Hendra
virus.

The study focused on an
isolated colony of straw-colored fruit bats on islands off the
west coast of central Africa. By capturing the bats and
collecting blood samples, scientists discovered these animals
have antibodies that can neutralize deadly viruses known in
Australia and Asia.

The paper is published today,
12 January, in the journal PLoS
ONE, and is a
collaboration of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the
University of Cambridge, the Zoological Society of London and the
CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory.

Hendra virus in Australia and
Nipah virus in Asia are carried by fruit bats and sporadically
“spill over” into people with tragic consequences.
The findings of the new study are significant as they yield
valuable insights for our understanding of how these viruses
persist in bat populations.

Cambridge PhD student Alison
Peel explains, “Hendra and Nipah viruses cause fatal
infections in humans, but we currently understand very little
about how the viruses are transmitted from bats to other animals
or people. To understand what the risk factors for these
‘spill-overs’ are, it is crucial to understand how
viruses are maintained in bat populations. The ability to study
these viruses within an isolated bat colony has given us new
insight into these processes.”

It was previously believed that
these viruses were maintained in large interconnected populations
of bats, so that if the virus dies out in one colony, it would be
reintroduced when bats from different colonies interact. The new
study indicates that a closely related virus is able to persist
in a very small and isolated population of bats. This is the
first time this has been documented in a natural wild population,
casting doubt on current theories.

Peel added, “Although
Hendra and Nipah viruses are relatively new to science, it
appears that bats have lived and evolved with them over a very
long time. We hope that by gaining a better understanding of this
relationship, we may then be able to understand why it is only
within the last 20 years that spill-over to humans has occurred.”